Summer Tomatoes

Special thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/9229859@N02/1280445882/sizes/m/in/photostream/ This was creative Commons licensed.

I have been feeling the burgeoning of summer tomatoes lately.

I've never been much a fan of tomatoes like my parents were and my mom still is. She'll eat them sliced on a plate and call it a good meal. Since becoming an adult I've grown to enjoy them, though not to that extent.

Still, the thing that impressed me then and still does now was how, through a small amount of effort and regular tending, it was possible to create a wealth of tomatoes. A harvest resulting in tomatoes on every available surface. Tomatoes on the porch, in the dog bowl, under the bird cage, behind the TV. So many tomatoes that people would be giving them away. When you came to someone's house, they'd say "you can leave, but you gotta take tomatoes with you."

Such sumptuous bounty is a very good symbol, a very good metaphor for my creative drive at times. In fact, both the bounteousness and the "embarrassment of riches" aspects of the symbol are apt.

I have learned that, unless my creative impulse has somewhere to go, it starts to leak out the sides of my consciousness. The fulsome bounty of creativity generates summer tomatoes: rich, fulsome, delicious, but sometimes a bit much.

When this happens my speech can get a bit awkward, my thoughts can race, my mind plays with words. It is just as difficult as when I don't know what to say, or when I say the wrong thing, sometimes, because it leaves people feeling…a bit lost? To follow my train of thought is as hard as it is to cut an over-ripe tomato with a dull knife.

This is part of what it is to be ADHD, to realize what is happening and to consciously try and channel those impulses, to make them be more useful than annoying, to tell your inner 3 year old to be patient, that this more boring stuff will be over soon and soon, you will be able to come out and to play.

That's called "deferment" and it's very hard to do, but part of what we must learn in order to cope with the Gatherer world. I had to defer posting this today because it was just not the time. Now I'm rewarding my waiting by getting this out before I go to bed.

At least summer tomatoes lets me know that there is still a rich fertile creative ground underneath it all, that I could if I wanted to harness these vines, harvest them, and maybe even put up in jars some marinara sauce, or stewed tomatoes, just like my family used to do when I was young.

I invite you to not stifle your creative urges, but think about a time when you could use them. Become willing to wait. Fulfill promises to yourself. You may not feel like you have much time left, but you do. And if you wait, then one day soon you can enjoy your own riotous blossoming.

Until then, enjoy this tomato. It's fresh, and ripe, and it's all yours.

Take two, they're small!

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